Watch a Man Play Guitar While Getting Brain Surgery

Scalpel. Forceps. Six string.

by Beckett Mufson

June 4, 2015, 3:10pm

Screencap via

Playing "Yesterday" by The Beatles while surgeons remove a brain tumor doesn't look pleasant in the below video of Brazilian bank worker and musician Anthony Kulkamp Dias' operation this past Tuesday, but it's the technique that's worth noting. Keeping a patient active lets surgeons keep track of brain activity, allowing doctors to make sure they cut in exactly the right places. "Cerebral monitoring [is] important to prevent injuries that occur in the sensory, motor and speech areas," a spokesman from the Nossa Senhora da Conceição hospital in Santa Catarina explains to The Telegraph.

During the course of the operation, Dias also played several Brazilian country songs, and one he wrote for his infant son. "The doctors asked me to repeat one of the country songs so I even had an encore,” he told Brazilian news website G1.

In 2009, American violinist Roger Frisch played music during surgery to stop a tremor in his arms, and in 2013 Sons of Anarchy actor Brad Carter strummed through an operation to implant a pacemaker. Listen to the songs that echoed through all three operating rooms in the videos below—none of which, despite how fitting it would be, are Metallica's "Crash Course in Brain Surgery."